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Late diagnosis here (38 when diagnosed, now 42)… I agree with everything you said. I had an amazing set of systems and coping mechanisms in place to get through life without realizing I was playing the game on hard mode. In retrospect, the signs were all there my whole life but I just hadn’t had the realization.

Now that I’m medicated (methylphenidate), I still lean on those systems but they serve me very very well. I remember details much better than I did, but don’t always remember them long-term. The note taking system and habit that I developed years ago is now… supercharged because I am so much better about keeping good notes.

On the coffee/meds thing, I agree. I don’t get a buzz from the medication the way I do from coffee, but before my diagnosis I was drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee every day just to stay focused, with the associated buzz and jitters. I still have a cup or two of coffee in the morning, but drinking anywhere near as much as I used to is pretty much unbearable.

Wow I could have wrote this exactly excepy for a 1 year difference in diagnosis.

It's hard to reconcile with how difficult it was previously. Life on hard mode is a term ived used too. I try to think that it was all to make me stronger for the second half of my life, but I still regularly wonder what could have been.

One of my favourite lines: “I could solve differential equations all day long, but I couldn’t remember to pay my phone bill”

To quote Ron White, "I'm smart, but you can't prove it on paper."

Heh, my undergrad transcript is so funny to look at in hindsight. Great grades in the hard courses, terrible grades in the easy courses. Did well on the final exams for all of them, couldn't be arsed to do the homework for the boring ones.

Please stop telling the world about my school experience!

One time I realized I hadn't gone to my intro chemistry class yet that semester and had a test that day. I went, bluffed my way through based on what I remembered from high school chemistry, figured out mid-test how to calculate rate-limiting reactions, and aced it. My then-girlfriend, now-wife was so incredibly annoyed with me about every bit of that. "What do you mean, you hadn't gone to class, ever? And that you still aced the test?!"

And I also failed a comparatively easy general ed class because I just couldn't convince my brain to care, even though I know I needed it and certainly didn't want to take it a second time.

Heh, yeah… I still occasionally have nightmares about something like that happening. Just completely forgetting about being registered in a class and walking in half-way through the year.

Had a midterm for a class I did actually like that went sort of how you described. I prepared for it a bit and was sitting around with some friends killing time before the 2pm exam. It’s about 1:40pm, I figure it’s time to head over. Go to the course website to find which room the exam is in and discover that the exam started at 1pm. Run over there, get there at 1:50pm, and finish the exam before the 2:30pm end time. Hand it in, the professor knew I’d been really late and had a weird look on his face as I give it to him. He looks it over, smiles, and says “I was going to offer some extra time for you because of the mix-up but… looking at your answers here… I don’t think you need it! See you on Thursday!”

I believe every word of this because I could absolutely see it happening to me.

ADHD cheers, friend. I'm proud of us for making it this far.

Perfect GPA in computer science despite playing games as much as possible during every class

Almost failed a history class because I couldn't do essays more than a day before they were due

I can do anything if it's urgent or interesting, but that's it

Story of my life, right there. I hear ya.

Also with you (both) on this one in pretty much every way too. I'd justify hard mode that I loved challenges (and I did, just not always in the right areas).

I try not to look/think back too much - I had (sort of still have) a very successful career but the costs associated with getting there were and are still being paid for.

Getting treatment and therapy has really helped improve my ability to be present, though still such a battle.

> I took that backpack off and how I can run the same race as everyone else. And you know what? When you've been practicing your whole life with an extra weight on your back, and you take it off, sometimes it's surprising how fast you can go.

The way I've always described this to people is that before, in order to get started on anything I first had to bang my way head first through a solid brick wall. It was painful and unpleasant and an absolutely absurd amount of effort. It didn't matter if the thing I was trying to do was "a load of laundry" or "build a shed"... same brick wall. That's pretty crippling in day-to-day life.

And then once I get through it I wasn't in the clear. The first interruption, the first unexpected thing that came up... was another brick wall I had to bash my head through.

The medication doesn't take away the walls, but what it has done is turn them all into drywall. I still have to bang my head through a lot of walls, but after decades of going head first through brick walls everything just seems _comically easy_.

I really wish someone had identified this sooner so I could have gotten treatment earlier. I'm grateful my life has gone as well as it has. I don't have nearly as many things to look back on with regret as other people that were diagnosed late in life. It does suck to realize that everything really didn't need to be so difficult. And some habits and coping mechanisms that allowed me to function aren't exactly healthy for me or those around me, and those are hard to unlearn.

Wait... Do I have ADD? I've never thought so, because I have three close friends who do (diagnosed and medicated), and they've never described it like this. And, like, they're always starting things they don't finish. I have massive trouble starting things, just like you describe, and have built (effective, I'll point out) systems like sibling commenters describe. This whole thread has bent my brain a bit.

I had that kind of a revelation right before I started the ball rolling. My kid has ADHD, and I didn’t “get” it for a while. When they described things like you mention, I assumed that was the way it was for everyone. I was completely shocked to find that no, it’s not, or at least not to that degree.

Well, huh.

(Similar story with asthma. I was training for a marathon relay. My doc asked how that was going, and I said it was fine, except you know how after a mile or so, you get cotton mouth and tunnel vision? No. No, they did not know. And that’s how I ended up with a pre-run inhaler, and immediately shaved a minute off my mile pace. Holy crap. Not everyone feels like they’re dying mid-run? Why did no one tell me?)

I found out I had ADHD because I was catching up with a friend who had been diagnosed since I last saw them. They'd been seeing a psychologist, taking medication, and generally addressing it. They were describing their experiences, strategies they had developed prior and now recognized, and others they were working on with the psychologist for addressing challenges, etc.

I spent the entire conversation essentially going "Wait, what?! That's not normal?" and "Wait, what?! That's a coping strategy, not what everyone has to do to get through their life?".

Called my GP, told them my concern, they referred me to a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist asked me a bunch of questions and was like "Yep, you have ADHD. You have, naturally for someone your age, developed a lot of coping strategies, but those are also consistent with ADHD." and sent me back to the GP to start medication.

So, do you have ADHD? I don't know!

I'd suggest doing some reading about ADHD symptoms, about other people's experiences, and if a lot of it feels really relatable... maybe talk to a medical professional about it. If you do have it, even if you're coping successfully, there's no reason life needs to be as hard as it is.

Does it mean you DON'T have ADHD if you get a stimulant affect from Adderall?

No. Brain chemistry is complex and different stimulants hit different people different ways. It took like 5 medications to find one that didn’t make me feel like a tweaker.

Originally diagnosed as a teen, was put on Adderall XR and it made me feel like an empty shell every day I took it - stopped taking it after a few months, figured the diagnosis was wrong. Last year after realizing many of my struggles in my adult life indicated I did, in fact, have ADHD, I went to my primary care provider and...well, duh, I do have ADHD. Started taking lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse) and, while it doesn't magically make many years of learned habits vanish, I can actually function like a normal adult, or, as another poster in this thread said, I can get shit done without it being an emergency (or something I'm inextricably interested in that would immediately cause me to go into hyperfocus mode.)

Hell, caffeine barely does anything for me if I'm not taking my meds - I could pound energy drinks and go to bed 30 minutes later. Meanwhile, unless I have built up a tolerance, nicotine would give me a legitimate rush, and I unknowingly self-medicated that way for years (though it was substantially less effective).

The human brain is funny, it doesn't matter if you're ND or not, different stimulants affect people in wildly varying ways.

Similar experience here. I usually take the weekend off from the medication. Sometimes it serves as a reminder of what it was like before.